Tag: qualifiable

My youngest daughter is in fourth grade. As she moves away from the primary grades, her teachers are encouraging her and her classmates to move from concrete, quantifiable thinking into more abstract, qualified terms. As we get older, it’s important to realize that concepts like happiness can’t be measured, but in many ways those are the things we need to have in our lives.

So when Willard M. Romney (I’ve decided I’m not going to use the cuddly little moniker for him anymore) gets on television and tells the world he will eliminate all funding for PBS, it’s just one more reason–and therearemanyofthemalready–why I could never vote for him to be president. It’s a simple case of quantities and qualities, and my own life experience.

Back in the early 1970s, before I even started kindergarten, children’s television didn’t really exist. But PBS, and the Children’s Television Workshop, received federal dollars and used them to create programs like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I watched these shows, and learned things that made me who I am today. I learned letters and numbers, yes, but I also learned about things like sharing, cooperation, and the power of imagination.

As a child, we’re more open to all of these things than we’ll ever be again. My parents hopefully provided some of these things in the home, but they couldn’t make me laugh like Kermit the Frog or Count von Count could. So a large part of who I am today is due to these shows.

The costs of producing these shows can be quantified by the level of funding that PBS received and distributed. But the good that this programming did can’t possibly be known. Is society $50,000,000 better off today than it would be if I were in jail for stealing a car or killing someone over a gambling debt? I don’t know. I’ve never done those things, and I never would either, because I started off school knowing things and using that to build my confidence to want to learn more. There’s no dollar figure that can be assigned to that, for me or for anybody else in a similar situation. But whatever money PBS received, it’s all come back to society in ways we can never really comprehend.

So when candidate Romney proposes lowering the boom on Big Bird and his cohorts, he’s writing off the benefits that these shows have undoubtedly brought over the past 40 years. All to save a few dollars. For him, it’s simply a question of quantity over quality. And for me, it’s Exhibit A for why he is unworthy to hold the highest office in this land.